SIS Description: Examination of particular movements within the period, (e.g., the Aesthetic Movement; the Pre-Raphaelites; and Condition-of-England novels). For more details on this class, please visit the department website at http://www.engl.virginia.edu/courses.

Class Website

Class Subtitle

Victorian Works and neo-Victorian Reworkings

Description

In this class, we will consider original works by major Victorian authors alongside contemporary neo-Victorian adaptions in order to reflect on the ways that canonical texts are reworked for a modern-day audience. Founded in 2008, the Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies defines this movement as “the contemporary fascination with re-imagining the nineteenth century and its varied literary, artistic, socio-political, and historical contexts in both British and international frameworks.” Over the past fifty years, hundreds of novels, movies, and TV shows have been set in the long nineteenth century, from movie adaptions of Jane Austen novels to Downtown Abbey. We will read and watch works of neo-Victorianism that extend beyond the setting of Victorian England into the global territories of British-controlled India, Australia, and beyond.

For instance, we will look at how Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea serves as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre that views events through the perspective of the mad wife in the attic in the former British colony of Dominica. We will also read about a modern neo-Victorian named Sarah Chrisman, who dresses, eats, and lives in the same style as the Victorians in the American city of Port Townsend, Washington. Finally, we may also think about how people have integrated aspects of Victorianism into their lives by listening to steampunk music albums by bands like Abney Park. Throughout the semester, we will read relevant theoretical texts that offer different perspectives on the field of neo-Victorian studies in order to deepen our understanding of these works. Tentative other authors include John Fowles, Sarah Waters, A. S. Byatt, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and the Brownings.